I’m a feminist. Everyone’s feminism is different, this blog is my feminism. My feminism is richer for understanding your feminism. I get the most intelligent comments in the world on my site (case in point: see the first two comments on this page). Seriously, I’m very lucky and after most posts I wish I could re-write them to incorporate the really good points readers have raised.

I also co-facilitate feminist discussion groups. I like talking as well as writing. Our most popular feminist discussion group ever was When sexual desire compromises your feminism. Apparently everyone feels compromised.

There is a blue milk myth I was told when I was a new mother.. and it is that if you drink alcohol you need to empty your breasts of all the bad (mother) milk (which incidentally will be a disturbing shade of blue from all the bad, bad alcohol), before you can feed your baby again. I’m ashamed to admit that in my ignorance I even repeated this myth to another new mother. So essentially, even if there was an opportunity for you as a new mother to cut loose and have a nice evening you couldn’t really take it up unless you were prepared to face the horror of turning your milk blue (in fact the first milk in every feed has a blue tint and it is perfectly normal), the slow trial of expressing it all, the heartbreaking waste of tipping it all down the drain, and then the challenge of somehow keeping your hungry, little baby quiet while it skipped a feed waiting for your clean milk. No. Small. Feat.

Here are 1011 thoughts on the experience of feminist mothers from a bunch of great women thinkers. I tried to choose quotes that would cover a range of experiences for mothers today and I looked for quotes that stopped me in my tracks and made me think. Most of these quotes sounded like more eloquent versions of my own private thoughts.

“A mother must put on her oxygen mask first, in order to be able to help her children” – I see this instruction on airplanes as an appropriate metaphor for feminist mothering. Mothers, empowered, are able to better care for and protect their children – Andrea O’Reilly. (More here).

The baby’s needs are very insistent, and they’re normally not responsive to things like the mother’s needs for sleep, or food, or rest or break. That experience the first night of being more incredibly tired than I’ve ever been in my life, from having gone through the experience of the labor, and it was grueling as they tend to be. And just thinking that I felt badly deserved of a break — long, uninterrupted sleep, and not getting it, and the dawning realization that the days when you could depend on justice, in that sense, were over. That happens immediately, or it did for me. You can feel yourself kicking against it in an ineffectual way, but you realize that things have changed. How soon you accept it is another issue, but it is a source of frustration and guilt, because it sounds so selfish to talk about posing your own needs against those of your helpless infant, but we’re only human, and we do do that. And it seems unfair, feels unfair, much of the time, but we do it anyways. To me, that makes women quite heroic. – Susan Maushart (More here).

They may have been living comfortably with their spouses for a decade, but when they become mothers, the gender inequality becomes more noticeable to them. These women are really trying to question how we do motherhood.(To fathers who challenge this point, O’Reilly would offer a pop quiz: What is your child’s shoe size? When was their last immunization? What food won’t they eat? When is their next dentist appointment? What is their issue right now? ) Real equality means men are doing that thinking, too. – Andrea O’Reilly (From here).

We’ve internalized the notion of rugged individualism so deeply that we believe we are solely responsible for our children’s health and well-being. And we believe that this belief, instead of being a sign of hubris or of despair, is an entirely normal and natural thing. This leads us to place terrible pressure upon ourselves – and gets our society almost entirely off the hook as far as responsibility for children and families goes.
Our “post-feminist” generation grew up believing we could do and be anything – and as young women it’s fair to say that we pretty much could. But all this ran aground once we had children. For many women it became very difficult to reconcile not just “work” and “family,” but our pre-motherhood and post-motherhood selves. The equal partnership marriages so many of us believed we’d entered into (so naturally that we didn’t even articulate it to ourselves at the time) changed once we became parents. Many women found themselves sweeping up Cheerios, picking up boxer shorts, and contemplating their husbands at the breakfast table through the protective screen of “his” newspaper. Many began to nurse a simmering rage. – Judith Warner (More here).

At least two things are happening. There is an ongoing media backlash that urges women to stay at home, and indeed there is a slight decline in the percentage of women with babies under the age of two or three entering the work force. So, on the one hand, there is this enormous pressure for women to conform to a retrograde, one-size-fits-all motherhood. On the other hand, women are starting to talk back, in “momoirs” and through activism, an incipient movement of mothers. It’s an interesting crossroads. – Susan Douglas. (More here).

There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me. . . . Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal ‘other.’ The children’s demands on me were things that nobody ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor. To deliver something that somebody could use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. . . . Somehow all of the baggage that I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me -– whatever that was -– but somebody actually needed me to be that. . . . If you listen to [your children], somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me that I liked best was the one my children seemed to want. – Toni Morrison.

I felt very ambivalent in my soul about daycare, even though with my mind, I had no problems about it at all. That was really unanticipated. I didn’t think I was going to have that struggle, but I did, and it affected the trajectory of my subsequent career. I assumed the worst case scenario would be that I would work part-time, and resume full-time when she was three or four. And even that turned out to be an unrealistic projection, because I hadn’t thought about what happens in the hours before school starts, or after school finishes. I hadn’t thought about having two additional children to care for. So here I am, ten years after the birth of that first child, and I still don’t work anything like full time. I spent a number of years as a single mother, and that really wasn’t easy. I found at one point in my life that I was on public assistance, a single mother’s pension, because I couldn’t face the thought of leaving my kids to go to work full time. And I never thought I’d do that. – Susan Maushart (More here).

In the sixties and seventies, well-educated women began to wonder why they were picking up their husband’s socks: wasn’t he just as smart and wasn’t he just as able to pick up his own socks? Most women don’t realize how far feminism has taken us. In 1970, married women could not have a separate bank account or own a car themselves. In 1970, a woman could not marry and keep her name. In talking to women who have read the book, many I come across say that they didn’t realize feminism addressed motherhood. Their association — largely because of the media spin about feminism — was that feminists are anti-mothers.Now, a lot of couples enjoy more equality until children arrive. It’s as if the introduction of the child is a chance for the man to regress. Maybe once a woman is a mother, she can kind of be his mother as well. I keep saying to women that wondering, “why am I the one doing ___?” is a feminist thought. – Meredith Michaels. (More here).

Most importantly, remember that as women liberated from traditional stereotypes, we have the freedom to be as traditional as we please and still communicate the strength and ability of our gender in and out of the home. As human beings, we care for our families out of love, not because it is our duty as women. – Haley Feuerbacher (More here).

The ante on motherhood has been upped. June Cleaver had it easier: she could just send the kids outside to play. Nowadays, mom is not only supposed to raise children but raise them to an impossibly high standard. For example, when Dr. Stanley Greenspan introduced the concept of floor time for children on the autism spectrum, it was a specific treatment for children with specific needs. Now, mothers with healthy babies are supposed to commit to floor time and to feel badly if at the end of the day they haven’t done enough floor time with their babies. Oh, and vacuum the floor, too. Seriously, it’s extraordinary when you think of it how much energy goes into one child, extraordinary how much worry goes into one child. Educated, caring parents see a study — say, the one about not exposing preschoolers to television — then feel devastated about showing their newborns Baby Einstein videos. Somehow, in all of this we’ve put aside common sense. We rely too heavily on experts. We need to take the veneer off of motherhood. Here’s another thing I find fascinating about this time in our culture: we love for science to prove parenting theories right. Dr. Sears appeals to the science adoring, proof-hungry parent, but at the same time, he justifies his prescriptions by citing practices of primitive cultures. So, science and women in Africa prove you should wear your baby in a sling all day long. Does anyone talk about why women in Africa wear their babies? Because they are working all day long and they have no other place to put the babies. If they were given a choice, would they perhaps put the babies down more often? What the experts tap into is women’s profound ambivalence about how much this experience of motherhood should dictate their lives and their identities. – Meredith Michaels (More here).

A generation ago, raising kids was spontaneous and organic. Now, you really have to make an effort to connect, and it’s very structured. (Parenting programs and activities) are about the baby or the infant or the toddler or the preschooler, and the mother is an afterthought. Could you really go into one of these moms-and-tots programs and say, ‘Last night, I thought I was going to strangle my kid’? – Andrea O’Reilly (More here).

63 Responses

23 Responses to “About”
1. Do you find that when sexual partners find that you are with breast milk they wish to try and nurse?
Fred said this on April 28, 2007 at 4:54 pm

2. Fred, what a question. I’m going to answer it even though I’m not sure if you’re just spamming me because quite a few people have used search terms similar to your question to get to my site. “sexy women milk feeding” anyone?
First of all, thanks for thinking that there is the remotest possibility that on top of juggling everything else I could possibly be juggling more than one sexual partner. Foxy mama multi-tasking. But there is one, as in one sexual partner; the father of my baby who I love madly so you know, I’m not http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/ (who has a lot of experience but none breastfeeding) and I don’t have a wealth of experience breastfeeding with different partners to draw upon. Second of all, breastfeeding is pretty tiring, it takes up a fair bit of time to breastfeed one child. I’m not sure I would have had the energy to indulge the fantasies of my partner, who had his share of breastfeeding as a baby and a toddler, had he had them. So no, it never came up.
But I’m sure plenty of other couples have explored this fantasy and good for them. However you won’t see me posting on breastfeeding grown men, sorry to disappoint.
blue milk said this on April 28, 2007 at 11:26 pm

3. Hey, feel free to link my blog wherever you want. I am comfortable being identified as a feminist mother although I don’t really feel like my blog is thoughtful enough to go on your lists, someone might click on it and be very disappointed at the frivilous goings on over there! So I wouldn’t be offended if I just dont fit into your link lists! I sort of blog as the non-serious part of my life, just mucking around and not focusing on the serious aspects (which are VERY serious), which is in way opposite from the purpose of your blog. Which by the way I love to read because it is excellent reading thoughtful, serious musings on motherhood and life as a woman. Anyway, your writing rocks so rock on..
VictoriaE said this on May 18, 2007 at 10:28 am

4. P.s. I feel a bit out of place writing that comment after that absurd comment you got about breast feeding but I can’t find an email adress for you.
P.s. I love Anais Nin’s diaries, read some of them every few years. Must get them out of the library again. What a writer.
VictoriaE said this on May 18, 2007 at 10:32 am

5. Yeah VictoriaE, it is hard to top that breastfeeding comment.
Anyway I love your blog, its beeeeeeautiful and I would happily recommend it to everyone.
bluemilk said this on May 18, 2007 at 1:03 pm

I’ve seeing ‘bluemilk’ on bianca bean’s blog for a while now, and I’m glad I finally followed you over from her latest post about breastfeeding and ‘ew’…I’m quickly getting hooked on your writing. The genesis of ‘blue milk’ and debunking myths is something I wish had known about before I was subjected to my own well-meaning girlfriend’s authoritative advice on pumping and dumping after I drank a glass of wine at her dinner party. I was horrified even though I had been talking to other moms about how a glass of wine wasn’t harmful at all. Negative scare tactics were usually the ones that stuck with me in the beginning, so I poured my freshly pumped milk down the sink and waited three hours, painfully engorged, to pump again for a “clean” bottle. There’s too much and not enough information for us out there.
momomax said this on June 12, 2007 at 2:11 am

What a lovely comment, thanks momomax.
bluemilk said this on June 12, 2007 at 10:40 am

Hello! I love, love, love your blog! I’m all about maintaining my personality, spunk and vibe post-birthing process. I’m 14 weeks right now, dreading every remaining day leading up until the greatest moment of my life. I’m cataloging the minutes in my blog at http://mercerblack.wordpress.com. I hope you’ll give me a visit. I’ll be back for more of you!
~Mercer
mercerblack said this on June 27, 2007 at 2:43 am

Thank you Mercer for such a sweet comment, I will be very interested to read your observations of your transition into motherhood.
bluemilk said this on June 28, 2007 at 6:19 am

I feel like a kid with a new toy. I’m loving your blog. Thanks for the thoughtful posts and the funny stories. And thanks also for the amazingly calm response to good ole’ Fred (above). That’s grace under breastfeeding-fetish fire. You are a brave person. I blogrolled you and will definately be checking in regularly. Maybe I’ll even think of something relevant to say someday.
Theresa
Theresa said this on July 4, 2007 at 4:32 am

Ooh thank you Theresa, how flattering. I look forward to reading your site.
bluemilk said this on July 4, 2007 at 1:46 pm

This comment is not to lead you to my blog. I just want to draw your attention to a brilliant writer, a friend of mine, who shies away from attentions. But she has written a very touching piece on certain things which has happened to her friends. I think it is topical and she deserves to be read.http://cassandrababbles.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/you-curved-the-chocolate-bitter/
Life’s Elsewhere said this on July 8, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Oh Penni, what a lovely thing to say, that was a fantastic comment to receive (incl your post) – especially the timing, which you couldn’t have known but let me just say… it was a really good pick-me-up. Thanks for reminding me to add you to my blogroll.
bluemilk said this on August 8, 2007 at 11:23 pm

Did I really find this fantastic blog for feminist mothers?! I am loving reading what you have to say and thank you for putting it all out there like this.
MR said this on August 26, 2007 at 5:52 am

MR – Thank you for such a wonderful comment!
bluemilk said this on August 26, 2007 at 8:36 am

My friend suggested I read this blog and I’m so glad I did! Thank you for some entertaining and thought-provoking posts.
‘Feminism’ and ‘motherhood’ co-exist in my life, and it’s so great to find a blog that recognises that they can! You are now on my blogroll.
Sooty said this on September 30, 2007 at 3:55 am

As soon as I figure out how to build a blogroll, you’ll be added. I’ve been reading you for months, and I’m delighted to find someone who understands that feminism and motherhood are not mutually exclusive and attempts to make a dent in the world’s understanding of that very foreign concept.
Deb said this on October 6, 2007 at 4:06 pm

I just wanted to drop by and thank you for this series you’re doing with interviews about feminism and motherhood. I did a similar interview with my own mother about a year ago and it was a very enriching and powerful experience, and it’s given me a greater appreciation for the real work that these women do — reading more stories like hers here is really very heartwarming. A great big hug for all the feminist mums out there! *e-hugs*
baby221 said this on November 5, 2007 at 4:29 am

Thank you baby221. I would love to read your interview with your mother, if you post it on your blog please let me know.
bluemilk said this on November 5, 2007 at 12:07 pm

i just tagged you for seven random facts….please don’t hate me…i felt the need to be part of the in-crowd.
serahrose said this on November 14, 2007 at 2:37 am

I like your blog, it’s frank and to-the-point, and I guess you’ve been told that before.
I blog from India and it’s refreshing to read a blog that’s not all cutsie and sweet. We all love our babies, that’s true, but very few people talk about what the mother actually goes through after the baby. In India, it’s worse, mothers are expected to be superhuman and not loving motherhood is somewhat scandalous.
Not that I hate motherhood, to be frank, I do love it, but there are moments when you want your peace and quiet. I took to blogging to keep my sanity, much like a million other mothers.
My blog is about mommyrage and how to deal with it. It makes me feel better, and that I guess is the point of writing it all down.
dummling said this on December 17, 2007 at 3:29 pm

I agree with dummling. I like your blog, bluemilk. Isn’t it nice to be free of “… but being a mom is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done… my child is my joy.” If you’re a mom this is likely a given but shouldn’t have to be necessary to balance every observation or frustration noted. There’s so much guilt involved in mothering. It’s mad.
As for the milk myth, I’ve never felt badly about a half glass, small glass of wine now and then. The “pump and dump” seems gross and ridiculous. Been breastfeeding to almost the 2 y mark and my daughter has never been “drunk”. lol
Jasi said this on January 6, 2008 at 7:16 pm
6.

How uplifting to see such intelligent, insightful and down-to-earth writing on the internet. As a man who (unfortunately) has no contact with women in real life whatsoever, it is enlightening and refreshing to read your blog and see things from a female perspective. I have great admiration for who you are and what you do. You are helping me to challenge, and hopefully change for the better, the way I perceive women and for that I thank you. You come across as being a very thoughtful, intelligent person and in my experience of the internet this is a rare thing. I only hope I can shed the sexist, misogynistic attitudes and tendencies in mind, of whose existence I have probably been largely in denial, and learn to fully appreciate women (like yourself).

Don’t change the header, it’s just beautiful. I have one of these milk jugs on my shelf, but it doesn’t look like as lovely as this one! I bought it for about a dollar from local french supermarket because it is exactly the same as one my mother used to have sitting on the boiler. We thought it was priceless, ‘cos it was only used on very special occasions.
L x

I just discovered your site and I am impressed. Please keep on writing. I especially like what you wrote about feminist mothers. There have been so many criticisms of feminism because it seems to leave out mothers. I think it’s important to show that feminism is just as important (if not more important) for mothers as it is for non-mothers. It’s people like you who are changing feminism’s image. Thank you.

‘Blue milk myth’ is not a myth! … I haven’t previously heard about the blue milk myth before, but came across your website just now when trying to understand why my expressed milk suddenly came out blue and I think the ‘myth’ actually explains it. I had my first real glass of wine last night since my baby was born and when I expressed afterwards (as I always do at night) I was shocked to see it looking very blue. Very weird and very different from every other night. How toxic it is I don’t know, but it looked too weird to offer my baby so I’ve tossed it out. Maybe it doesn’t happen every time to every woman, but it certainly happened this time to me!

Maggie – it is a big fat myth, lucky for us because the ‘pump and dump’ takes precious time and as a mother with baby you have very little time to spare. The first milk of all feeds has a bluish tint and is watery and is called the fore milk. The milk at the end of the feed is creamier and whiter and is called the hind milk. The fore milk is used to hydrate the baby where as the hind milk fills the baby up. This is why in hot weather babies often want the breast but only for short drinks, they are after the watery fore milk as a drink.

You don’t need to pump and dump after having a drink either, your body metabolizes the alcohol in the milk in the same way that it does in your blood. Around an hour after your drink you will probably be back to a zero blood alcohol limit and so will your milk.

Hi Blue Milk!
You don’t know me, but I’ve been reading your blog and enjoying it. I am a fairly new blogger, but for what it’s worth, I’m passing on the Beautiful Blogger Award to you. You can see it at anattitudeadjustment.blogspot.com.

Blue milk isn’t a myth, I’ve just scanned over the internet as madly searching why I just expressed a little breast milk out of my right breast and am completely freaking out at out of one duct the milk is coming out BRIGHT BLUE, I mean bright blue, the other ducts on the same breast are normal white. The other breast is fine, normal white. I’m thinking of going to the doctors tomorrow, my toddler even said boobie blue. What’s going on? I’ve not had a drink since I was pregnant and since having little one but I did eat cupcakes at a birthday party yesterday and some had a similar colour frosting/icing, could that be it? and why only one duct? So strange and I am a little worried.

I realised the blue milk thing not long after I started my blog when I googled myself. Didn’t realise how big the star wars cult of all things blue milk was, though probably should have given everything star wars is so huge.

[…] Tourism advert from Iceland Thank you for making my morning! I’m not sure when I’ve smiled so much watching advertising! (now cut it out!). And thanks for sharing this with your readers, Blue Milk!! […]

I am deliberately circumspect about my other work here and that is because I am under very tight contractual obligations not to discuss it in public forums without the consent and knowledge of my employer.

But for the record, I like that work very much, it is also hugely interesting to me, it is just that I also really, really like writing about feminist motherhood.

[…] prevent us from good mothering? Because incidentally, I also attract readers here from time to time looking for something apart from feminist discussion, who are instead seeking ‘sexy breastfeeding’ stories and images. (And what a crushing […]

I have a question.
I am NOT a drinker and eat my wheat, greens, meats, fruit and limit fish; the same diet when I was pregnant.
My milk is usually blue.
I don’t take med.s and I am not drinking.
Is this normal?

Really, Target?! Really?! Because what new mommies really need is a test strip designed to tell them whether or not they should “pump and dump.” I was positively horrified when I saw this product–even more so when I got online and read all the glowing reviews. What happened to using common freaking sense?!!

OMG, I’m so glad I found this place!!! My daughter is now 3, and I’ve been thinking off and on about raising a girl in our society and what that means in relation to feminism, and then…here you are! Looking forward to looking around here more. 🙂

Thank you for your blog… I stumbled across it actually researching an old blues song, Milk Calf Blues by Robert Johnson… He talks about his “Milk Cow’s(actually his girlfriend with a new baby) milk it turning blue”.
The song goes on to tell how the “calf” is hungry but it out of luck ’cause the milk is blue.

Your Myth fits the song perfectly… I was so confused thank you for clearing it up.

hello hello! im a feminist mum bringing up three sons from a feminist perspective with the support of a partner who is supportive and wonderfully feminist. I rarely read blogs but was directed to your via a twitter link and wow really appreciate some of your posts. thank you, tho you may have opened a whole new procrastination world for me!

I love that you are trying to clear up the “pump and dump” myth. I always point out to women that, after we have a few drinks, we don’t get complete blood transfusions, do we? Our bodies just reabsorb the alcohol from our blood, and it is the same with our Bmilk.

It is also helpful to point out that the blood alcohol level and amount of alcohol in bmilk is the same. So…. if your blood alcohol is .08% (ie: just tipsy for most of us) than your breastmilk also contains 0.08% alcohol. Which isn’t too much in my view. And that makes me feel a lot better about bringing babe to breast while I have had a drink or few, and shows that bfeeding fits into *normal* life!

I often enjoy you blog and would love your advice. This weekend I attended a family function and had a great chat with a cousin who is starting her senior year of high school. She is a neat kid and I see such leadership potential in her. I want to give her a nudge toward political awareness. I’ve been thinking about what was influential to me at that age, but I know things have changed and the messages that resonate now are different. I just read in the Beloit freshman outlook survey that there has been a woman secretary of state for much of their lives. !!! That blew my mind a bit. And has anyone else seen the 21 Jump Street movie? Hella funny, but made me feel OLD. I have no clue about high schoolers. When did that happen?

Anyway, any suggestions for books or magzines? Or is that old thinking? My one thought was a copy of Half the Sky. What is a “gateway” into being a feminist for a slightly sheltered kid from SE Michigan

[…] prevent us from good mothering? Because incidentally, I also attract readers here from time to time looking for something apart from feminist discussion, who are instead seeking ‘sexy breastfeeding’ stories and images. (And what a crushing bore […]

[…] Our first time interview on ABC Radio with Steve Austin. Honoured to be on the panel with Kate Thomas Managing Director of Communikate and also Andie Fox Economist, Feminist and Blogger of Bluemilk […]

Hi, I love your extemporaneous postings! I have two questions on what it is to be a feminist. 1. Is it possible for a genetically-male individual to be feminist?
2. Is it wrong to feel more confident and productive in a feminine gender presentation?
A bit of my background: I’ve transitioned to living as female from previously having an androgynous gender presentation and I’ve never been able to fit hardly any male aspects of appearance or behavior. Here in the southern U.S., organizations claiming to be feminist tend to exclude trans-feminine persons and I feel very much alone. Hence, my two questions. I wish you the best in life and writing!

Bluemilk, how have I only just discovered you?! I am so loving reading the thoughts of an intelligent, articulate and truly feminist mother!

I had to try the ‘pop quiz’ for fathers… and my hubby got 4 out of 5 (and I wasn’t sure of our child’s shoe-size myself.) So proud! I actually think he’s becoming more feminist with parenthood, and I find myself asking “why do I always have to make the decisions?!” less and less.

I will be coming here a lot I imagine. And am working on a response to your ’10 questions for feminist mothers’. Very thought-provoking. Thank you!

I just stumbled onto your blog, and I really like your writing. I’m unclear whether you’re posting new material or not, but I’ve followed. I find your writing clean, concise, on-point, and thought-provoking. Glad I found it!